Friday, June 11, 2010

Bittersweet Times

So these past couple of months have been crazy. Literally, it feels like anything life could have thrown our way it did. Of course, we weren't hit hardest, but still I was close enough to watch with front row seats. My father-in-law, someone I spent many a hour with trying to tame the kids, died recently. It was sudden. He had a heart attack.

The whole family spent about a week, everyday in the hospital, hoping he would wake up, but it never happened. It seemed out of no where to us, but when I look back now I see how it was almost like he had tried to prepare us for it. Not mentally, or emotionally, but financially. He tried to stabilize us, all of us. He and my mother-in-law were helping us with a house. He babysat one of his grandchildren, so his daughter could support her child and herself. He made sure we had transportation, just a week before the heart attack, he bought a car for his niece, his son, his mother, and his daughter. I was given his wife's car, so that she could get a newer car. Now, my family is not rich, so you may ask where all this money came from. Remember the accident from about a year ago, it's from a settlement he got. He spent most of it on other people, because that's what he did. He took care of everyone.

I was so mad when I realized this. I said to thin air, "Do you think this makes it better, somehow less painful, because we can have a place to live or a car to get us from place to place, because I'd give it all back if you could stay!" That's what I thought. I still don't completely understand.

I am grateful however, that I had the time with him I did. He taught me a lot about being a parent. Sometimes it's not about doing everything perfect. Let them have sweets! It's about trying, and sometimes failing, but always doing. I love that man, and I wish I had said it for him to hear, but I know he's heard me since, and I know he knew it even though I never said it out loud.